Council start publishing new twice weekly local coronavirus update on the situation in Wrexham
A detailed briefing on the pandemic situation locally has been published by Wrexham Council, the first of a new regular twice weekly update system.
Today’s Public Health Wales dashboard update reported +93 on the day on day new case figures for Wrexham, with positive proportion of tests at 20.1%. The seven day rolling period up to the 30th now has Wrexham at 735.5 per 100k , and that week reports 1000 positive cases.
Today has also seen the release of a new twice weekly update to Wrexham Councillors, that Wrexham Council are also sharing direct more widely. Previously councillors were being provided with similar daily stats briefing with some commentary, one of which we published recently amid calls that the information should be made public.
Councillors were, and are being encouraged to share the information with their communities, with a range of success. Now the update is being more widely shared, and will be circulated at the start and end of the week.
The full update for today is copied below, with all bolding and underlining of points is copied from Wrexham Council’s email, and we intend to do similar for future updates:
Dear Councillors,
This is the first of the new, twice-weekly, updates on Covid-19 that I will be sending to you (and that will be sending to the press/media) on Monday and Friday afternoons. I would encourage you to share it with your own community councils, other local networks and constituents, and not just if your ward lies within one of the several ‘hotspots’ (see under ‘The Sub-Areas’, below).
DATA ON THE VIRUS
Please find attached two new tables:
Table 1 – a summary of the weekly data for the county borough as a whole compared to other councils in North Wales since the pandemic first began in the spring.
Table 2 – a summary of daily data for the 18 ‘MSOA’ statistical sub-areas of Wrexham since PHW started reporting them at this level on 20th October 2020.
- Please note that the data over the Christmas and New Year period are more tentative and out of date than usual and that we can also expect a backlog of cases to be reported over the next few days which will further distort the statistics. It is therefore more reliable to look at the trends over several weeks, as shown in the tables and as discussed below.
The County Borough as a Whole (Table 1)
The more transmissible (approximately 66% so) ‘UK’ variant of Covid-19 is present in Wrexham which will have increased the rate of spread, as will the Christmas easing of the Level 4 Alert lockdown. There are no known cases of the ‘South African’ variant, yet. As a result, all of the statistics for the 7 days up to 30 December have got much worse and, with the exception of positivity, have exceeded those of the first wave, last spring. Cases per 100,000 population are 735.5 today. Positivity (29.9% today) has more than doubled over the last three weeks. Case numbers are lower today than the peaks of the last few days, but on a week-by-week basis have also more than doubled over the last three weeks to the highest they have ever been.
Wrexham has always been an outlier in North Wales, but now it is almost as worse as any council in Wales: in the last week our rate per 100k population having worsened from 14th to 2nd place in Wales and our positivity rate having worsened from 12th to 2nd, partly because there have been large reductions in cases in South Wales.
The number of hospital admissions has not risen as steeply and the recent significant change from the 80-89 age cohort amongst patients being the most affected to the 30-39 age cohort has recently been reversed with the 70-79 age cohort now being the most affected, but with a rise in the 20-29 age cohort as well. The number of deaths have also not risen steeply. There is always a month’s lag between new cases and these data, so we will have to wait to see what the next few weeks bring, but neither hospital admission nor deaths have yet reached anywhere near the levels of last spring.
The Sub-Areas (Table 2)
Almost all of the 18 ‘MSOA’ sub-areas of Wrexham have seen worsening figures since my last report to you 7 days ago on 28th December.
- 11 have recorded their worst figures since 20th October when PHW first started reporting these data (shown in bold on the table), comparted to 10 on 28th December.
- 13 have greater than 550/100k, compared to 8 on 28th December.
- 6 have greater than 800/100k, compared to 3 on 28th December. Of these, there are now 6 in the worst centile in Wales, compared to 3 on 28th December:
o Hermitage & Whitegate has 1154 twice the 583 reported on 28th December
o Johnstown North & Rhostyllen has 1141 twice the 538 reported on 28th
o New Broughton & Bryn Cefn has 1031 nearly twice the 567 reported on 28th
o Llay South & Gwersyllt East has 1022 compared to 860 on 28th
o Wrexham West has 948 which is fewer than the 972 recorded on 28th
o Gwersyllt West & Summerhill has 928 which is fewer than the 1266 recorded on 28th
- 0 have less than 300/100k, compared to 1 on 28th December
Settings
The virus is very widespread with the principal locations remaining households followed, some way below, by outbreaks in care/nursing homes, the Maelor Hospital and the prison. There are no official outbreaks elsewhere, but several clusters in workplaces, such as the large employers.
MANAGING THE VIRUS
General
The Level 4 Alert lockdown, which came into force on 20th December, should soon begin to have an effect, as the October ‘firebreak’ did, but the presence of the ‘UK’ variant and the easing of the restrictions over Christmas may have acted against this and no firm conclusions can yet be drawn from the data collected over Christmas and New Year. Welsh Government will be reviewing the lockdown on 7th January, but we should expect it to be extended for at least a further 3 weeks.
Education
The college and university have been closed which will have acted as a brake on the spread of Covid-19. Students returning to the halls of residence in the next few weeks will be tested on arrival and many in both the university and the college will not be returning at all, but accessing their courses on-line.
Just before the Christmas break, the number of new cases in schools rose such that the decision was taken to move to on-line classes and, again, their closure will have acted as a brake on the spread of the virus. For at least the first week of the new term all of our schools will deliver learning on-line, though provision will be made for children of critical workers, if required. All schools have written to parents to inform them of these arrangements. It is currently proposed that all pupils will return for face-to-face learning from 11th January, but this position will be reviewed with schools this week on the basis of the data emerging from the Christmas/New Year period. Meetings between Education and the schools are taking place today and a meeting is planned with Welsh Government officers to discuss the position on Wednesday.
Council Services
The Council is continuing to provide critical services as publicised on our website.
Enforcing the Regulations
Multi-agency teams are trying to manage the various local occurrences, but it is a very difficult battle given that the principal setting is households. This is being managed by the IMT (Incident Management Team) which meets each Tuesday. Public Protection officers are working with NWP to enforce the lockdown regulations (especially in the ‘hot-spot’ sub-areas). Colleagues from several Council departments are supporting TTP, having provided good cover over Christmas and New Year.
Mass Testing
Arrangements are being put in place to facilitate mass testing in schools and there is also testing in particular care homes. However, at the moment, PHW and BCUHB do not plan to undertaken wider community mass testing in any parts of the county borough. Such testing was undertaken in the summer to determine whether there was community transmission in particular parts of Wrexham town, but we now know that there is widespread community transmission so mass testing will not tell us more than we already know. Also, as we are in a lockdown, there are no additional tools available to us or Welsh Government to tackle the virus. This position will be reviewed at the IMT meeting tomorrow.
Mass Vaccination
Approval of the Oxford vaccine provides a further boost to vaccination in Wales as a whole and in Wrexham in particular.
The Health Board have confirmed that North Wales is receiving, and will in future continue to receive, 22% of all vaccines made available in Wales based on population size. This will apply to vaccines arriving in each week.
Locally, staff from care homes are currently receiving vaccinations through the Mass Vaccination Centre in Deeside. Staff from homes which have current diagnosed cases cannot yet access the vaccine, but as they come out of this status they will be able to do so. A pilot roll-out of the Oxford vaccine is planned for one care home in Wrexham and one in Flintshire this week with rapid roll-out to others to follow. Again, early roll-out will be limited as care homes will not receive the vaccine during an active outbreak.
As more stocks become available priority groups in the wider population in Wrexham will be targeted to receive the vaccine through the Mass Vaccination Centre in Enfys Hospital, Deeside (which became operational before Christmas) and two local centres in Wrexham (Plas Madoc and Glyndwr University), which are expected to be up and running early to mid-January. In addition, discussions have been held with GP Cluster Leads to establish vaccination capacity across primary care from 11th January. Prioritisation is based on age with the over 80s receiving the first doses, but, simultaneously, there is an aspiration to start inviting domiciliary and other social care staff to be vaccinated.
The availability of the Oxford vaccine will make a huge difference.
Later this week a cascade document to Council representatives on the vaccination programme will be made available which will make it easier for everyone to be kept updated going forward.
More information can be obtained via the following link: https://phw.nhs.wales/topics/immunisation-and-vaccines/covid-19-vaccination-information/about-the-vaccine
Communications
The Council’s communications team is continuing to signpost people to the correct information – including current restrictions in Wales, and any impact on local services. Over Christmas and New Year, we’ve been reminding people that, under the current Alert Level 4 restrictions, they should:
- Only mix with people in their own household (both indoors and outdoors).
- Only travel for essential purposes, such as work, health reasons or caring duties.
We’ll continue to reinforce these key messages this week, and anything you can do to help share these messages in your communities would be helpful. It’s crucial that we encourage people to limit the number of contacts they have at the moment and not to mix with other households.
You can signpost people to the Welsh Government website for more information on the current restrictions. The Welsh Government and Wrexham Council Twitter accounts also contain useful information that you can share with your communities on social media.
If you have any queries about this note please let me know and I will do my best to answer them.
Chief Officer Planning and Regulatory
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